Re: Calculators and "Cheating"

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

> Howdy-
>
> I allow my students to use a note card on all tests and quizzes. Further
> they may use any calculator that doesn't dim the lights. (I teach high
> school physics.)
>
> It doesn't take long for students to realize the implication of this
> situation. I won't be asking for definitions or equations. All problems
> and essays (yes, I give essays) are based on applications of the laws and
> equations. They can also expect to see new problems or problems from a
> different tack on every test.
>
> The initial euphoria over the note card quickly fades as they realize that
> the tests will be different than the ones from other teachers. A few drop
> my class right then. (Physics is an elective at my school.)
>
> ---
>
> Marc Kossover
> marck9@mail.idt.net

I do exactly the same. But my students don't have the option to drop
the course. I point out to them before the first test of the year
that they can make the "cheat sheet" work for them, by preparing it
carefully in advance, in which case they probably won't need to refer
to it at all, or they can treat it as what it is called, in which
case it probably won't help them at all, since it is guaranteed not
to have any answers on it. I have also found that giving tests other
than multiple choice, true/false or fill in the blank makes cheating
much more difficult, and so I have very little problem with it. I
don't require the students to stay in the classroom (but they do have
to stay in the area), and I don't proctor them, although I do wander
in and out of the classroom relatively frequently. I note that on our
campus, those teachers who give lots of multiple choice type tests
worry a lot about cheating, and have devised all sorts of elaborate
schemes to thwart it, most of them contributing substantially to
their own workload.

I have also found that making up a multiple choice test that really
tests the understanding of a student is quite difficult. Most of the
ones in the test manuals that accompany modern textbooks are awful. I
served on the editorial committee for the College Board SAT-II
Physics test, and came away with considerable appreciation for the
effort they put in to make the test as near a valid measure of
physics understanding as possible. Granted that grading essay and
word-problem tests takes longer, but making up a proper multiple
choice test takes a long time also, if one is interested in doing it
well.

I will just add one word for the multiple choice test community--it
is just as easy to make up problems and essays that are a mindless
and superficial as many of the m/c tests that are out there. When you
see a lousy m/c test, don't blame m/c tests, blame the bozos who put
it together. My one experience with a group of state test-makers was
a horror. They thought that because they knew about the theory of m/c
tests, they could make one up without having to know any physics.
They apparently just went through a few texts and picked out some
items that looked good to them and turned them into questions. This
is not the way the folks at ETS do it. For all their faults, and
perhaps flawed theory (although I think most of the "theory" about
the SATs doesn't come from ETS but from journalists who write about
it), they try very hard to get questions that do what they want them
to do. That they don't always succeed argues to the difficulty of the
task they have undertaken.


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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